259 – Ryan Wolfe of Canton, OH Is President & Executive Director Of Ability Ministry, Equipping Churches To Embrace Disability

Transcript:

Tom Couch: Special thanks to Horizon Therapeutics for sponsoring the Special Fathers Network Dad to Dad Podcast, working tirelessly to research, develop, and bring forward medicines for people living with rare and rheumatic diseases. Discover more about Horizon Therapeutics’ mission at HorizonTherapeutics.com.

Ryan Wolfe: That’s how you do it. You just start a conversation with, “Hello.” You don’t have to have it all figured out when it comes to interacting with people with disabilities. You just have to treat them as you would anybody else. And the best place to start is just by saying, “Hello.”

Tom Couch: That’s our guest this week, Ryan Wolfe, a minister, and President and CEO of Ability Ministry, empowering and equipping local churches to embrace disability. Ryan and his wife Melissa, have two children: Rocco 16, and Zoe 14, who is dyslexic. We’ll hear all about Ryan, his family, and his work on this week’s Special Fathers Network Dad to Dad Podcast. Here’s your host now, David Hirsch.

David Hirsch: Hi, and thanks for listening to the Dad to Dad Podcast, fathers mentoring fathers of children with special needs, presented by the Special Fathers Network.

Please support the 21st Century Dads Foundation by contributing to Dads Honor Ride 2023, which is a 3,100-mile seven-day bicycle ride taking place from June 17th to the 24th, starting in Oceanside, California and ending in Annapolis, Maryland. I’m one of the four riders and would really appreciate your support. Please make a tax-deductible contribution by going to 21stCenturyDads.org.

Tom Couch: The Special Fathers Network is a dad to dad mentoring program for fathers raising children with special needs. Through our personalized matching process new fathers with special needs children connect with mentor fathers in a similar situation. It’s a great way for dads to support dads.

David Hirsch: And if you’re a dad looking for help or would like to offer help, we’d be honored to have you join our closed Facebook group. Please go to Facebook.com, groups, and search “dad to dad.”

Tom Couch: Now let’s hear this conversation between David Hirsch and Ryan Wolfe.

David Hirsch: I’m thrilled to be talking today with Ryan Wolfe of Canton, Ohio, the father of two teenagers, a family pastor, and President and CEO of Ability Ministry, whose mission is empowering and equipping local churches to embrace disability. Ryan, thank you for taking the time to do a podcast interview for the Special Fathers Network.

Ryan Wolfe: Yeah. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

David Hirsch: You and your wife, Melissa, have been married for 25 years and are the proud parents of two children: Rocco 16 and Zoe 14, who has dyslexia. Let’s start with some background. Where did you grow up? Tell me something about your family.

Ryan Wolfe: Yeah, I grew up in Canton, Ohio. Our claim to fame is being the home of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Both my parents were public school teachers. I have one brother who’s a year and a half older than me. His name is Chad. All still living. Yeah, just kind of grew up part of the nuclear family that was very much plugged into church and service. So that was always something that was very natural to me and important to our family.

David Hirsch: Excellent. Thanks for sharing. I didn’t hear you mention Beaver Cleaver, but that’s sort of what came to mind.

Ryan Wolfe: Hah hah! Yeah, pretty much. That’s pretty much how family life was. Blessed to be that way.

David Hirsch: Excellent. So I’m curious to know how would you describe your relationship with your dad?

Ryan Wolfe: With my dad? Oh my gosh. Super close. My dad being a public school teacher, he was also an elder at our church that I grew up in. And during the summers, he wasn’t one that just took the summers off. He ran his own paint crew so painted houses and stuff. And so he started me on his paint crew when I was nine years old, so I was painting houses as a nine year old. One thing I love about my father is he’s someone who never slows down and just values hard work. And that’s just something that he instilled into me and I appreciate so greatly. Just the value of hard work and and never slowing down.

David Hirsch: Yeah. Thanks for sharing. Are there some important takeaways in addition to having that good work ethic that come to mind when you think about your dad? Perhaps something you’ve tried to replicate in your own fathering?

Ryan Wolfe: I think part of it is just making the commitment to be there for every event. I played every sport you could imagine growing up as a kid, as a teenager. I don’t remember a single sporting event where I didn’t see my dad in the stands. So I think that’s something that was really important for me to replicate as a father myself. Being there for my kids, whether it’s a dance recital, a track meet, a choir competition. Just important for me to be there and to cheer them on.

David Hirsch: Yeah. Thanks for sharing. It’s one of the most important things that we emphasize from the 21st Century Dads Foundation perspective, which is being present. And I think what I heard you say is being present physically, which takes a big commitment especially if you have more than one child and other commitments. We also go as far as to say that it’s important for dad to be present not only physically, but emotionally, financially, and spiritually. And I think you made reference to his spiritual leadership as well by being an elder of the church and setting the tone for you and the rest of your family for that matter.

Ryan Wolfe: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

David Hirsch: Thanks for sharing and from a prior conversation, I made a note of the house which is not as far away as it used to be.

Ryan Wolfe: [laughing] Yeah. So my grandparents, my mom’s parents, they had a house in North Canton. I grew up in Canton like I said, about three quarters of a mile away. It was about, I wanna say 12 years ago we bought the house that my grandpa Perdue built out of a Sears catalog. [laughing] He ordered this house as a kit out of a Sears catalog, cuz you could do that back then. You can’t do that now. But he built it with his hands. And again, that’s something that was pretty cool. So as my grandma got up in years, needed to move into some assisted living. The house went up for sale and it wasn’t a question in our minds that we wanted to buy it, keep it in the family. So yeah. Very special that my grandpa’s and grandma Perdue’s house is now my house.

David Hirsch: Yeah. I love that story. Thank you for sharing it. And it got me thinking cuz Sears is headquartered here in the Chicago area and the company used to be so consequential, it was like the Amazon of its day.

Ryan Wolfe: Absolutely.

David Hirsch: Everybody got that Sears catalog across the country. You could buy anything, virtually anything from Sears.

Ryan Wolfe: Uh-huh.

David Hirsch: I think at one point, and you could fact check me on this, but I think Sears literally represented between 1-2% of the entire GDP for the country back in its heyday, and now it’s just a small fraction of what it used to be after spinning off most of its assets over decades and decades. But anyway, thanks for sharing that story. Any other father figures, any men that played an influential role in your life when you were growing up, or perhaps as a young adult for that matter?

Ryan Wolfe: Yeah I definitely… There’d probably be two people and again, from the church world for me, there was a youth pastor named Dyke McCord that was very influential in my faith development as my youth pastor. Still in contact with him from time to time now as partners in ministry. And then an old Bible Bull coach. A Bible Bull is a kind of academic challenge just with Bible questions. His name is David Hurd. He was the guy that kind of took me under his wing, helped me write my first sermon, gave me my first opportunity to preach a sermon in an old country church with about a dozen people in it as a teenager. But yeah those would definitely be two people that I remember quite fondly.

David Hirsch: Yeah. Thanks for mentioning and calling out Dyke and David. Sometimes you can only look backwards and connect those dots and realize that these were some of the angels that showed up earlier in your life, right?

Ryan Wolfe: Mm-hmm.

David Hirsch: And that believed in you and provided you with an opportunity maybe at a younger age than like you said, you might have been entitled to.

Ryan Wolfe: Yeah.

David Hirsch: So my recollection was that you went to Mount Vernon Nazarene University and took a degree in religion and Christian education and then a master’s degree from Cincinnati Christian University in mental health counseling. And I’m curious to know where did your career take you from there?

Ryan Wolfe: From there when we graduated, my wife and I got married a month after we graduated from Mount Vernon. Newlyweds, packed up the truck, drove down to Cincinnati and started graduate school right away. After we graduated with our master’s degrees in counseling, we had the idea that we would work towards opening up maybe our own Christian counseling center. So that was the idea. So as soon as we graduated, we started looking for jobs and my wife got a job almost instantly at Job and Family Services in downtown Canton where I grew up which was really cool! So she got that job offer and we packed up the same old truck and moved back to Canton where I grew up. She took the job downtown. Believe it or not, I put out a ton of resumes in the counseling world and never got a single phone call. What I did was I jumped back on my dad’s paint crew. He had since retired as a school teacher but went into full-time painting. So I’m like, all right, dad, I got nothing. [laughing] So he lets me jump on his paint crew.

About two months after moving back and working as a painter, I got a phone call from the senior pastor at First Christian Church in Canton, Ohio, who at the time was John Hampton because he knew I had gone to school and got a ministry degree in addition to the master’s degree in counseling. He said, you ever thought about working in children’s ministry? There was an opening for the children’s pastor at the time. And I said I had given some thought to that. And he brought me in for an interview and a couple weeks later I was working as the children’s pastor of my home church, First Christian Church in Canton, Ohio. So God brought us back to Canton.

David Hirsch: Yeah. That’s fabulous. And from what I recall, you spent the better part of 15-plus years with First Christian Church in a variety of different positions, first as the children’s ministry and then with the disability ministry. Is that correct?

Ryan Wolfe: Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, 15 amazing years at First Christian and like you said, my role evolved kinda over those years. But one thing that was always under my oversight was the special needs ministry or the disability ministry at the church.

David Hirsch: So what was it that prompted you or piqued your curiosity to shift your focus from working with youth to those with disability?

Ryan Wolfe: It was something that was always in the back of my mind, and like you said, we have the ability to look back and connect the dots with hindsight. But it was something that I think God had always lined up for me and made it as something that He truly desired for me to do. As I worked in children’s ministry, youth ministry, family ministry, as that kind of evolved, the one ministry that outgrew every other ministry I was involved in was our disability ministry. God seemed to bless it so abundantly. It was so clear that he was doing something special beyond anything that I could have dreamed up or concocted on my own. And it just got to the point where it grew so big.

The senior pastor at the time, who was Scott Rosen, came to me and he said, “You’re gonna have to make a decision. Do you want to do full-time family ministry? Or do you want to do full-time disability ministry?” Because again, cuz there are numbers in our programs and our events and stuff that we were doing just exploded. And when he asked me that question, it was one of those things where I was like, let me think about it. Okay, I’ll do disability ministry. So I was like, I’ll think about it for a second! Cuz I knew which way God was taking me.

David Hirsch: Yeah. Thanks for sharing. And you know what seems kinda odd to me about that is that most churches, synagogues, congregations have rather well-developed youth ministries, but not so much disability ministries. So there was something going on there that is, I don’t wanna say counter-culture, but different. Because my observation, and this is not there in Canton or here in the Chicago area exclusive, is that a lot of churches aren’t disability friendly. And I know we’ll get into it when we talk about Ability Ministry, but I was wondering what was the secret sauce? What was it do you think, looking back early in your career that was going on?

Ryan Wolfe: Yeah and again, we have the ability to look backwards. When I look at First Christian, the history of First Christian, our church is well over a hundred years old. Our church, I think something that kind of made us different was the fact that we had a Sunday school class for adults with intellectual developmental disabilities. That class has been around, I wanna say a little over 40, 45 years now. So very much the culture of First Christian Church in Canton, Ohio was the church of Sunday schools. So there was a point in time where our Sunday school attendance was bigger than our worship attendance.

David Hirsch: Wow. [laughing]

Ryan Wolfe: Yeah. So it was, it’s kind of crazy. So we had all different kinds of Sunday school classes. It was like something for everybody, literally. Which also included Sunday school class for adults with intellectual developmental disabilities. And I remember as a kid, literally as a teenager, seeing some of our friends from our class, me as a teen and them as adults, they were easy to pick out in the crowd because they walk different, talk different, than anybody I’d ever encountered. Because growing up in public schools in the eighties, special education classrooms were not located where everybody else was. There was no inclusion in the eighties. So I went to school. I’m in high school. I never saw anybody that looked different, talked different, walked different than I did, except for at church. So here’s this group of about a dozen adults that were different. And I know for a lot of people, once they encounter somebody that’s different, it’s scary and they shy away from it. But for me, I leaned into it cuz I’m like, who are these people? And the difference for me was something that was attractive. I got to know these people. I talked to them, I became friends with them. I sat with them at church as a teenager. So again, it’s different. I became friends with them. And just their acceptance at First Christian Church was something that became part of the DNA of church because a lot of people knew our friends from this Sunday school class. Just part of the culture of the church and when I joined staff in 2002, just had a passion for that to say, “Okay, we’ve got a class for adults, what more can we do?” was the perspective that I took when I joined staff. And we just added things here and there as needs arose and as we had different ideas, made different connections in community. And God seemed to bless every single attempt that we ever made.

David Hirsch: Yeah. Thanks for sharing. And it is obvious as you describe it, that it’s just part of the culture there, right? It’s not like a recent phenomenon, but it’s been going on for decades and decades.

Ryan Wolfe: Yeah.

David Hirsch: So let’s switch gears and talk about special needs, first perhaps on a personal level and then beyond. I’m curious to know before Zoe’s diagnosis, did you or Melissa have much of a connection to the special needs community outside of what you’re just describing from a professional perspective?

Ryan Wolfe: My wife had a family member who had Down syndrome. I never really had a great connection with them just as our families, different geographically. But she had a connection growing up. I really didn’t, not within immediate family circles growing up. So as Melissa and I got married and we had kids and so we grew up. Later getting a diagnosis of dyslexia, getting an IEP kind of introduced us personally to that world with her learning disability.

David Hirsch: Okay, so the diagnosis is dyslexia, and I’m wondering how did that come about?

Ryan Wolfe: She had all the the hallmark things, with mixing up words, difficulty reading, the decoding and different things. She’s a really sharp kid. So she was able to, I think, overcome a lot of that. So we really had to advocate to get her an IEP. So that was another thing that I can relate to families that have to really be an advocate for kids because, she’s pretty sharp. She was able to keep up for the most part in school. But we noticed that if she had an IEP, if she had a little bit of assistance she could do a lot better. So it was probably, let’s say between maybe the first and second grade year that we were able to get her some extra help at school.

David Hirsch: Yeah. What I like about what you’re saying, Ryan, is that instead of being in denial or saying, I don’t want the label, which comes part and parcel with getting a diagnosis, whether it’s dyslexia or something else. You leaned in and said, hey, it is what it is. Better to get the resources, better to get the intervention. We think of it as early intervention. It was, like you said, it happened in first and second grade. You put your child on a better trajectory if you’re addressing the situation. No doubt it’s benefited Zoe and hopefully the family as a whole. But looking back on it, in addition to pursuing the IEP path that you described, was there any other meaningful advice that you got that helped you and Melissa embrace the situation?

Ryan Wolfe: I think definitely [chuckles] one of the biggest benefits that our family has is that my wife is an intervention specialist in the public school system. She was actually working at the school that Zoe was at at the time. So she, with her profession that she works in, is very aware of students’ needs in addition to our daughter’s needs. So that was a huge help for us. I know that’s not necessarily the case for a lot of families, but for us that was an absolute home run. [laughing] Melissa is spectacular and she’s so good with all of her students but especially good with Zoe.

David Hirsch: That is a competitive advantage that…

Ryan Wolfe: Yes, it is.

David Hirsch: …the Wolfe family has over many of the other families, I’ll just say.

Ryan Wolfe: Yeah.

David Hirsch: And not to focus on the negative, but what were some of the biggest challenges that you’ve encountered related to Zoe’s dyslexia?

Ryan Wolfe: It comes and goes, I think, in waves for her of frustration. Sometimes she’s able to… mixing up the words, the words that don’t come out right. We’re all able to laugh at that. But there’s sometimes that it’s just been really frustrating for her. She hates her dyslexia, and I know she’ll say those words and just really get discouraged. So as a parent, just trying to encourage her through those ups and downs. I’d say the ups and downs have been fairly equal. She’s such a good kid. And she’s really learned how to embrace I think some of the positives too of dyslexia when it comes to her ability to be creative and think in ways and see things in ways that other kids can’t. So I think she’s begun to embrace that side of it. But yeah, just trying to help through some of those times of discouragement where she has felt like I’ll never be able to do that. Yeah, just being present and trying to encourage.

David Hirsch: Yeah. Thanks for sharing. So in addition to the IEP and the resources that are school-based, I’m wondering if there’s any supporting organizations that you’ve relied on for Zoe’s benefit or your family’s relied on?

Ryan Wolfe: Mainly the school-based helps. And again, because my wife is so amazing and because of her job as an intervention specialist and the continuing education that she’s been able to electively select for herself, she almost always selects it in the area of dyslexia and education in that area. So she’s always picking up tools professionally that she can use at home and at school.

David Hirsch: Tangentially, but from a personal perspective as well, I think you mentioned that you have a niece that has autism. I’m wondering what that situation is.

Ryan Wolfe: Yeah. My brother, as I mentioned, Chad, a year and a half older than I. He lives just outside of Indianapolis. He and Angie have one child. Her name is Reagan, and she, we, at least we believe she’s on the autism spectrum. They’re working on diagnosis and stuff like that. But yeah, she’s amazing. She brings a whole different perspective to our family. It’s been really neat to watch her grow up with my kids. She is pretty close in age to Zoe, so they’ve grown up together as really close friends. They live about five hours away, but thanks to technology, Zoe and Reagan are always texting each other.

David Hirsch: It sounds like the girls who are cousins are very close in age.

Ryan Wolfe: Yes.

David Hirsch: And it’s great that they can maintain that relationship even though there is a physical distance between them.

Ryan Wolfe: Yeah, absolutely.

Tom Couch: We’ll be back with more of the conversation on the Special Fathers Network Dad to Dad Podcast in just a few moments. But first, this quick message. Please help 21st Century Dads gather research on families raising children with special needs by having them complete the Special Fathers Network Early Intervention Parents Survey. A link to the survey can be found in the show notes. As a token of our appreciation each person, mom or dad, who completes the survey will receive a Great Dad Coin. Thank you. Now back to the conversation.

David Hirsch: Let’s switch gears and talk about disability I guess from a professional perspective now.

Ryan Wolfe: Sure.

David Hirsch: Because you used to be engaged with First Christian Church as a pastor, first as a youth pastor and then as a disability ministry pastor. And I’m curious to know how did this opportunity to switch gears, if you will, professionally and move to Ability Ministry, a 501c3 organization. How did that come about?

Ryan Wolfe: Yeah, so as God continued to expand our influence and our ability to reach our community, we as a church started to get recognized by different organizations, magazines, stuff like that. We were on the radio once and people all across the country heard of this radio broadcast about the ministry at First Christian. As our influence grew so did some of my connections with different organizations. So I got connected with Ability Ministry probably four years maybe before I made the transition. I would meet them at different conferences that they were attending, that I was attending. I would volunteer and help them and just got to know the leadership.

And just through conversations the previous executive director, Gary Spangler, who’s still on staff with me, he said, we’ve done a good job in our residential ministry. Because at the time before I transitioned to a building ministry, it was functioning just as a residential ministry. But he said, I’ve got a burden for the fact that there are millions and millions of people with disabilities all across the world that we need to be reaching. But he said, I have no idea how to do that. He said, you’re doing it at First Christian. You’re doing a great job of it. What would you think about coming on board with us and trying to basically replicate what you’re doing at First Christian in churches across the world? And to me that was something that was like super appealing. Just the idea of being able to reach the kingdom on a larger scale than just Stark County, Ohio and some surrounding counties.

So we began to have conversations and in 2017 I jumped on board with Ability Ministry and became a program director with them, with kind of a one-year transition to the point where Gary and I would switch roles and I would take over as Executive Director.

So yeah, it’s been amazing. It’s hard to think that it’s been almost six years now that I’ve been on board with Ability Ministry and just thinking of all the different things that we’ve done in six years is crazy. The huge blessing for me is the fact that we live in a digital, virtual world and I’ve been able to do my job primarily from home in Canton, Ohio. Didn’t have to move to where our home base is, which is in Tennessee. So it’s been a huge blessing that I didn’t have to uproot my family. And I’ve been able to work primarily from Ohio though I do some traveling to some of our different locations.

David Hirsch: Yeah. Thanks for sharing and let’s go back a little bit. The organization dates back to 1981 and from what I remember, it used to be known as Christian Church Foundation for the Handicapped back in the early days. And it was primarily, if I have my facts straight, residential in it’s nature like you made reference to in both Kentucky and Tennessee, which still exists today.

Ryan Wolfe: Mm-hmm.

David Hirsch: Not like you’ve abandoned that or it’s not part of what’s going on. But that might be the base, if I can call it that. Those are the roots that the organization has. And I don’t know when it changed its name to Ability Ministry, but you’ve been able to come in and then build on the success or the foundation that was there. And I’m wondering, over the last six or going on seven years now since you’ve been involved, you’ve been able to take the organization in I wanna say a completely different direction, but you’ve been able to enhance the footprint of the work that’s being done. And I’m wondering what’s been the catalyst for doing that.

Ryan Wolfe: Yeah. Yeah. I think again, it was Gary and his desire to reach the world for Jesus, specifically the disability community across the world for Jesus. Gary came from the airline industry when he came to Ability Ministry and he came specifically to help our organization get right financially. When he came on board we were having some financial troubles and he was able to do that. Yeah. Our organization in the eighties was known as the Christian Church Foundation for the Handicapped, which is a little misleading cuz we weren’t really a foundation. [laughing] We were just a, like you said, a residential ministry with homes in Tennessee, though our organization was chartered in Kentucky.

Before it became known as Ability Ministry… When I came on board, I made that name change. We were known as the Christian Church’s Disability Ministry, so CCDM. But I felt like that was too much of a mouthful. CCDM also felt like it was a little bit exclusive because we wanted to reach more than just the Christian churches. We wanted to reach out to all denominations, be able to help people in places of worship of all kinds. So that’s why we made the change to be called Ability Ministry. And if you see our logo, it says “DiS”, but the “DiS” is kind of faded and crossed out by the “A” in “Ability Ministry,” so that was very intentional.

But yeah, Gary came and when he brought me on board, just gave me the keys and said build this however you see fit. So basically just started from day one with making probably 95% of my focus creating resources for churches to use because our focus is to equip and empower the local church to reach their disability community for Jesus. So we just wanted to create resources and we wanted to make 90% of our resources free for churches to use. So we rebuilt a website, which we have since rebuilt again, AbilityMinistry.com.

And just with the intention of equipping churches we decided to create a very bad business model by doing consultations for churches that are free of charge. So free consultation. And free resources. Very bad business model, but very generous kingdom model. And with my belief that if we are generous in our pursuit of equipping churches, God will take care of us, is kind of the thought.

So yeah, we still do residential ministry but I have a Director of Residential Services. Her name is Ronna McBride. She’s been there for over 30 years and she does a spectacular job. So she handles 99% of it. So we have an arm that’s residential ministry and then an arm that is the equipping, empowering, training, education arm of our ministry where I spend, like I say, about 99% of my time.

David Hirsch: Yeah. It sounds like you’re perfectly suited for the work that you’re doing there and the growth that the organization has experienced as you’ve described. And beyond the free consulting services and the website, I noticed that there’s some books, there’s curriculums, there’s videos. I’m wondering if you could shed a little light on that for our listeners as well.

Ryan Wolfe: Yeah, absolutely. So again, our organization got started in the eighties. We were most known for residential ministry for the duration of really our existence. But because of the resources that we’ve created, I think it would be accurate to say that we are now most known for the curriculum that we create for churches to use in specifically their adult, young adult, maybe teen classes or small groups. We create curriculum for churches to use. We also create curriculum for children’s disability ministry. We’ve got a year of curriculum for that available as well. So definitely we’re probably most known for that. Our curriculum and our resources have been used in churches in 44 or 45 states now, and 25 different countries. We’ve got a pretty good reach that we’ve established over these last six years.

In addition to the curriculum we create training videos, awareness videos, disability-related sermons and we post all of those on our website at Ability Ministry for churches to use for free. Again, terrible business model, [laughing] but a generous kingdom model. I like to think of it like that. Anything you could imagine you would ever need in running a disability ministry in the local church, we’d like to believe that we’ve created it and made it available for churches.

And whenever a church reaches out to us and says, hey, I’d love to have this resource. I can’t find it on your website, do you have it? And if we don’t, it automatically goes on a content development spreadsheet and it becomes one of the things that we will work on creating. So we always encourage people, if we don’t have it, tell us what you need. We’ll create it. So that’s how we work. We create things that we know churches need based on the experience I’ve had working 15 years in the local church or by what people request us to create for them.

David Hirsch: I love it. Thank you. One of the things that’s relatively new, started in March of 2023, is the podcast that goes by the name of “Start With Hello.”

Welcome to “Start With Hello: Conversations About Disability.” This is the official Ability Ministry podcast where we will be discussing all things relating to disability and faith. For those of you who have no idea what Ability…

[fadeout of audio excerpt]

So what’s the backstory with the name of the podcast, and what’s your vision for that?

Ryan Wolfe: Yeah, this is super, super new. And Jason Morrison, my team is heading that up for us as an organization. The name, “Start With Hello” is one of the things that we love. Honestly, I think that phrase probably first came from Joni and Friends with Joni Eareckson Tada in a video that she created for kids ages ago. And it’s that phrase, we just absolutely love that phrase because we believe that that’s how you do it. You just start a conversation with, “Hello.” You don’t have to have it all figured out when it comes to interacting with people with disabilities. You just have to treat them as you would anybody else. And the best place to start is just by saying, “Hello.” So we love that phrase. We’ve put it on t-shirts and stickers and we send it out everywhere as just a conversation starter. But the idea of the podcast that Jason just started was we wanted to start by documenting our history. Much of our first episodes are gonna be with Gary Spangler, our previous Executive Director, documenting our history. And then some of our future episodes that we’ve yet to record, one of the ideas that we’re playing around with are tales from consulting. So again we do free consulting and we’ve run into just about every single question that anybody could ever come up with or problem or issue that a church has. So some of our future episodes will be documenting tales from consulting because we’ve run into some funny and some scary situations. So we wanna bring light to that and make that a resource for people.

David Hirsch: I love it. Thanks for sharing. And as somebody who’s hosted a podcast now for five plus years with more than 250 episodes, I’m hoping from your lips to God’s ears that the podcast will experience some of the same growth that you’ve witnessed and experienced in your disability ministry career as well.

Ryan Wolfe: Yeah.

David Hirsch: So one other thing before we move on. At the website, I noticed there’s a map with hundreds of affiliates, what I think of as affiliates, including organizations like Ability Tree in Arkansas with Joe and Jen Butler. Joe’s one of our Special Fathers Network mentor fathers. And I’m wondering what’s the purpose behind that map? What’s that resource all about?

Ryan Wolfe: Yeah. We have on our website what we like to call a church locator tool. So it’s basically just that. So you can go to it on our website. You can drop in your zip code. And what it will do is it’ll bring up the list of churches, at least that we have found or been made aware to us, that have some form of disability ministry programming available at their churches.

So we like the idea of, hey, family decides to go on vacation. They’re gone on a Sunday. If they’re not in their hometown, they wanna find a church that is welcoming to their family. All they would have to do would be to go to our Disability Ministry Locator tool and find what is close to them. So the other kind of flip side of that would be, if a family is looking for a church in their area, same idea. Drop your zip code in there and you could pull up some churches that have disability ministry programming, are friendly to people with disabilities.

So yeah, that’s one of the things that we’re really proud of. The Tim Tebow Foundation, their Shine On initiative, has actually taken our ministry locator tool, duplicated that for their website. So we work in conjunction with them to help spread the word about churches out there that are doing a good work for their disability communities.

David Hirsch: Yeah. What I love about what you’ve described is that you’re helping connect organizations that are like-minded and who have similar missions. And hopefully that network of resources that you’re helping engage or draw attention to will put people in contact with these resources in a shorter period of time than they might be able to find on their own. You mentioned the Tim Tebow Foundation. You mentioned Joni and Friends earlier. These are some of the pillars, what I think of as pillars, in the disability community, working with people in a lot of different locations around the US and well beyond now.

Ryan Wolfe: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

David Hirsch: I love it. Thanks again for sharing. So I’m thinking about advice now and I’m wondering what advice you might be able to share with parents and specifically dads who find themselves raising a child, or in some cases multiple children, with disability.

Ryan Wolfe: One of the things, especially from a father’s perspective, as I look over the landscape of disability ministry, as I look over the landscape of who makes disability ministry happen in churches, I’d be willing to ballpark it at about 80 to 90% of people that are working in the field of disability ministry, either volunteer or staff, are ladies or women. And one of the things that I think that would be one of the hugest blessings to a disability ministry at a local church level is to have men be more involved. That father figure is so, so important. We actually created a resource for churches called “How to Get Men Involved in Disability Ministry.” So just the presence of having men there is so huge and so important.

But kind of a different answer or take on that question, I would just encourage fathers specifically to celebrate your children. Celebrate your children with disabilities in the same way that you would anybody else, any other kids. Sometimes that’s different because opportunities aren’t available to them. One of the reasons we created a resource called “Disability is Beautiful” is because we wanted to give parents the opportunity to celebrate their kids with the world. DisabilityIsBeautiful.com is a free stock photography website that gives parents and people with disabilities the ability to upload their favorite photos of a loved one or of themself to share with the world.

We noticed as an organization that as we create curriculum and resources, we’re often in need of stock photography of people with disabilities. And that’s not a resource that existed. So that’s something that we decided to create and I think that’s just a really cool way, whether for a father or for parents in general, to be able to celebrate their kids. Because you often drive behind a car that has a name and a number of a sport of a child. Parents celebrate their kids in that way. But when it comes to a child with a disability, there’s not always those opportunities. And I think this is a great way, a great opportunity for people to celebrate their kids, to share them with the world, to say we love them, they are beautiful, and the world needs to see them and celebrate them in the same way that we do.

David Hirsch: Yeah very insightful. Celebrate your children. I love the fact that you’ve created this DisabilityIsBeautiful.com stock photo platform. And one of the things that I’ve observed, having interviewed hundreds and hundreds of dads and some moms as well, is that some of them don’t have what you might call, not professional photos, but photos that more typical families have. I think that’s what you were referring to. And I think that we all need to err on taking those photos, celebrating our families in as typical a way as possible, right? Because all kids are beautiful and they’re all different.

Ryan Wolfe: Absolutely.

David Hirsch: And we need to celebrate that, like you were saying. So thank you for drawing attention to it and doing something about it. It’s one thing to talk about things. It’s another thing to actually create a resource like you have.

Ryan Wolfe: Yeah. Yeah.

David Hirsch: So is there anything else you’d like to say before we wrap up?

Ryan Wolfe: No. I’m just really thankful to have the opportunity to share a little bit about our ministry and some of the different things that we’ve created for churches to use. So thank you for having me and allowing me a little bit of time to share about our ministry and about my story personally. It means a lot.

David Hirsch: Oh, you’re welcome. So if somebody wants to learn about Ability Ministry or to contact you, what’s the best way to do that?

Ryan Wolfe: Best way is to jump online. Our website is AbilityMinistry.com. We’re all over social media @AbilityMinistry, so you can find us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok. We’re all over the place, so we’re pretty easy to find if you just search for Ability Ministry.

David Hirsch: Excellent. We’ll be sure to include as much of that as we can in the show notes. Ryan, thank you for your time and many insights. As a reminder, Ryan is just one of the dads who’s part of the Special Fathers Network, a mentoring program for fathers raising a child with special needs. If you’d like to be a mentor father, or are seeking advice from a mentor father with a similar situation to your own, please go to 21stCenturyDads.org.

Thank you for listening to the latest episode of the Special Fathers Network Dad to Dad Podcast. I hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did. As you probably know, the 21st Century Dads Foundation is a 501c3 not-for-profit organization, which means we need your help to keep our content free to all concerned. Would you please consider making a tax-deductible contribution? I would really appreciate your support. Ryan, thanks again.

Ryan Wolfe: Thank you.

Tom Couch: And thank you for listening to the Special Fathers Network Dad to Dad Podcast. The Special Fathers Network is a dad to dad mentoring program for fathers raising children with special needs. Through our personalized matching process, new fathers with special needs children match up with mentor fathers in a similar situation. It’s a great way for dads to support other dads. To find out more, go to 21stCenturyDads.org.

David Hirsch: And if you’re a dad looking for help or would like to offer help, we would be honored to have you join our closed Facebook group. Please go to Facebook.com, groups, and search “dad to dad.” Lastly, we’re always looking to share interesting stories. If you’d like to share your story or know of a compelling story, please send an email to David@21stCenturyDads.org.

Tom Couch: The Special Fathers Network Dad to Dad Podcast was produced by me, Tom Couch.

Thanks again to Horizon Therapeutics who believe that science and compassion must work together to transform lives. That’s why they work tirelessly to research, develop, and bring forward medicines for people living with rare and rheumatic diseases. Discover more about Horizon Therapeutics at HorizonTherapeutics.com.